Bad Billionaires Box Set

by Elise Faber

  It had made him rock-hard from the first moment he’d heard it.

  Confident, cool, and with just the hint of rasp. Heather O’Keith was sex incarnate, not that anyone who dealt with her in the business world would dare to say such a thing.

  Not when she was so buttoned up and controlled in those suits she wore. Fuck if Clay hadn’t jerked off to the image of tearing her shirt open, pearl buttons flying every direction, and then bending her over and pulling those slacks past her thighs. He’d drop to his knees and eat like it was his last meal. He’d—

  “I’m taking your silence as a yes,” she said, smirking before staring down at her perfectly painted nails as though considering whether she needed a manicure. Her right hand drifted over her left, and his eyes caught on her ring finger, remembering something.

  He winced and rubbed a temple. How much had he drunk last night?

  The last time he’d had a hangover this bad he’d been newly twenty-one.

  “Fuck,” he said and dropped his chin to his chest.

  Heather snorted and he glanced up, one half of his mouth curving.

  His voice was rough. “Apparently, I can only use the F-bomb directly upon waking.”

  “Or upon hangover,” she quipped, her left hand coming up to brush an errant strand of hair off her forehead.

  There was something about that movement, about the color of her polish—red with silver sparkles—that was familiar.

  But then again, how did he know there were silver sparkles on her nails?

  They just looked red from here.

  And he was losing it. Completely and utterly losing his mind.

  “What’s the matter, big guy?” Heather asked. “I can practically smell the smoke from here.”

  God, he liked this woman.

  She was spine and fire and spunk, confident enough to sledgehammer a man’s balls when he was fucking up or trying to take advantage. More than that, Clay had way too much respect for Heather as a businesswoman to minimize her skills by qualifying her solely as a ballbuster. Her mind for business was unparalleled, and she had outmaneuvered him more times than his ego cared to admit.

  His eyes finally processed the wall color behind her chair. The rug beneath her feet. He stood, whipped around, and realized all at once that this wasn’t his hotel room. Not his bed, not his room, and judging by the décor as he snatched a throw pillow off the floor and used it to cover himself way too late, he wasn’t even in his hotel.

  “Why am I here?”

  A huff of laughter had him turning to face her in time to witness another brush of those sparkly red nails against her shirt.

  A shirt that . . . he tilted his head, studying her closely, because it wasn’t buttoned correctly. No. That wasn’t it. Her shirt was missing buttons.

  Pearls flying. A freckle on her left ring finger that he’d kissed. One on her right hip that he’d nibbled.

  “Did we have sex?”

  “Ding. Ding. Ding,” she said, her eyes clouding with some emotion as she tapped her nose. “I knew you could get there in the end.”

  Clay’s eyes were locked on her face, trying to recall if she’d unfrozen at all in the sack or if she’d stayed so utterly in control.

  Aside from flashes of naked skin, his brain wasn’t much help. But he did know that if he hadn’t been able to shatter that famous control of Heather O’Keith’s, then he clearly hadn’t done his job correctly.

  He sank onto the edge of the bed. “Damn. I wish I could remember it.”

  His words made her flinch, a flinch he would have missed if he hadn’t been studying her so carefully. Somehow, he’d said the wrong thing without trying.

  That was his specialty when it came to Heather O’Keith.

  He should have just stuck with fucks.

  “Hey,” he said, rising from the bed and walking over to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  She put up her hand. “Stop your alpha I-need-to-fix-everything brain for a hot second. I’m fine. And frankly, we’ve got bigger problems.”

  And then she held up a piece of paper that made him halt in his tracks.

  Chapter Three

  Heather

  Heather watched as Clay’s stride faltered before he continued forward.

  The man turned heads as he walked down a sidewalk, but coming toward her, only that stupid pillow tucked across his hips, all rippling muscles and sun-kissed skin . . . fuck her, it took her breath away.

  She wasn’t lucky like Clay. She remembered every moment of their night together.

  Calloused fingertips across her skin, hot lips pressed to hers, to her neck, to the space behind her ear that made her head spin. Hard against her soft, him sliding home, filling her to capacity before he’d proceeded to hit all the right spots. He’d known exactly how to please her, almost better than she knew how to please herself.

  So, yeah, her Clay Steele fantasies hadn’t done the real man any justice.

  She shifted in her seat, pressing her thighs together as the memory of him kneeling before her the previous night sent all her nerve endings on high alert.

  His eyes flicked down, and moisture flowed south.

  Ugh. He was so not helping her little issue.

  That issue being her lack of control and her drunken idiocy. She’d been fuzzy on the details upon waking, but a long, hot shower and her attempts at locating her missing pearl buttons and then fumbling to reattach them to her shirt with the ridiculous sewing kit from the tray in the bathroom had ensured she was fully sober and in possession of every single one of those memories.

  She’d only utilized her pathetic sewing skills in the first place because she hadn’t expected to spend another night in Vegas and had sent all of her luggage ahead to RoboTech’s private plane.

  Which had been fueled and waiting for her—she flicked a glance down at her watch—for the last eight hours.

  To take a page out of Clay’s book, fuck.

  She should have called for the butler to buy her a new shirt and ran, taking the ring and marriage license with her. She could have gotten her lawyer friend Bec to arrange a quiet annulment as quickly as possible and then send Clay the details when it was taken care of.

  But she hadn’t been able to leave.

  Not when Clay had been . . . what?

  Vulnerable. Fragile. Different from the man she knew and understood.

  Yet as he strode forward and took the paper from her fingers, Heather didn’t know what she’d been thinking. He wasn’t the least bit vulnerable. He was strong and, not that she would admit it, intimidating.

  Clay Steele was far too smart for his own good, and he made her want too many things.

  Things she couldn’t have.

  Commitment wasn’t in her DNA.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asked, eyes boring into her.

  “That is a marriage license,” she said. Rather helpfully, she thought, despite the glare he shot her way. “With our signatures, if you haven’t gotten that far down yet,” she added with a wave of her hand, trying to keep hold of her cavalier this-is-just-a-little-hiccup attitude she used frequently with the flightier members of RoboTech’s board.

  His brows pulled together, twin slashes of dark chocolate that made her want to sidle close and kiss his frown away.

  Kiss his—?

  What the fuck, Heather O’Keith?!

  She cleared her throat and stood. “I’ll get my lawyer working on an annulment as quickly as possible.” She moved close to Clay, close enough to snag the paper from his fingers while forcing herself to ignore her body’s reaction to him.

  Heather was a strong, independent woman, dammit. Just because a man was sexy as shit and could find her G-spot without a four-hour tutorial and diagrams, didn’t mean she could afford to lose control.

  Look where that had gotten her mother. And for that matter, her father.

  Even the one time her half-brother Jordan had lost control, he’d created a mess so huge that he’d nearly obliterated h
is business and his personal life.

  Colin and CeCe were no different. Running free and loose had nearly killed any chance of their future together. It was only by a fortuitous trapping on a twelve-hour plane ride that they’d managed to work out their differences.

  So no, she wouldn’t be repeating her friends’ mistakes. If she decided to take the non-drunken plunge into matrimony, it would be a carefully considered choice. She definitely would not wake up with a crinkling paper under her ass and find herself married to the man who was her adversary in the business world.

  But as often happened with Clay Steele, all of her best-laid plans went to hell.

  His lips—the soft, skilled set she’d feasted on the night before—quirked and he moved, faster than she could blink, plucking the marriage certificate out of her grip and turning away.

  The sight of his delicious ass rotted her brain.

  That was the only conceivable reason for her just standing there like an imbecile as Clay strode to the bathroom and paused, a mischievous light in his mocha eyes.

  “Oh no, Heather,” he said, carefully folding the paper into thirds. “You’re not getting off that easily.”

  Then he closed the bathroom door.

  It locked with a click.

  Chapter Four

  Clay

  Clay braced his hands on the marble counter and dropped his chin to his chest.

  This was a mess and a half, and he had the marriage certificate to prove it.

  An annulment was the right call, the easiest solution to resolve the shitty consequences of his idiotic tour of All Things Not to Do in Vegas, but then Heather had gone and declared it all but done in that imperious tone of hers. With his brain throbbing and his body aching—because though the memories weren’t there in his mind, his body clearly remembered how much fun they’d had together—and he’d just . . . he’d wanted to make her mad.

  The paper that was as dangerous as a nuke crinkled in his grip, and Clay blew out a sigh.

  An annulment it was.

  It had to be.

  So why then was something inside him revolting at the thought?

  “Fuck,” he muttered, leaving the license on the counter and turning to crank on the shower. The first thing he needed to do was scrub away the remnants of his drunken night from his skin.

  Well, the first thing he needed to do was to brush his teeth, because hello, dragon breath.

  Anyway. The point was he’d accomplish the simple things—e.g. general human cleanliness—and then deal with the giant mess he’d made of his life.

  He groaned and picked up a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste on the counter. Both were open and clearly used, but considering he’d probably spent half the night with his tongue on or in Heather, he figured he’d risk the germs in favor of clean, minty-flavored breath.

  After, he set the shower to scorching and by the time he stepped out and toweled off, felt well on his way to his normal self.

  Of course, that was before he realized he had no idea where his clothes were.

  Or his cell.

  Or his wallet.

  Clay sighed and tilted his head back, staring up at the fluorescent lights.

  Naked walk of shame down the Strip. Yeah, that would be just about perfect on this day.

  He shivered despite the scalding shower he’d just taken, the memories doing what they always did. Freezing him from the inside out, the cold seeping into his extremities, raising goose bumps on his skin. No matter how many layers he put on, he was still always cold.

  Frost on the windows.

  His breath coming in rapid clouds of white.

  Fingers going numb.

  And blood. So much blood.

  Clay wrenched open the door and stumbled into the room. The empty room. His clothes had been folded and sat neatly on the end of the bed, alongside his wallet and phone.

  Why did that feel like it was less an act of kindness and more of a parting shot?

  Not that it mattered.

  He needed to get dressed and get to the airport. He had meetings in London and Berlin then a sit-down with a prospective client in Amsterdam. Then he needed to fly to San Francisco and finalize some contracts before heading back out to New York to check in with his CFO.

  So no, his life didn’t need any hiccups, and it definitely didn’t need one Heather O’Keith throwing another wrench into it.

  The hesitation he’d felt before his shower was gone, chalked up to his blurred, fuzzy, hungover mind. He’d taken the license from her because that was his way. He liked to be in charge, and he didn’t trust anyone, least of all the woman who’d been so adversarial over the last months. Clay would give the contract to his lawyer and demand an annulment as quickly as possible.

  Heather was just going to have to deal.

  He was handling this his way, and that was the end of it.

  “Exactly,” he grumbled, agreeing with his internal dialogue as he tugged up his slacks. “She’s not always in charge.”

  He shrugged into his shirt and as he did up the buttons, a memory sparked. Heather had undone them the night before, kissing along the path of skin she’d revealed, smirking up at him as her fingers had drifted toward the waistband of his pants.

  He’d been rock-hard and aching, and that smirk had snapped something in him. Clay had reached for her, grabbing her around the waist and tossing her onto the bed. Buttons had flown, her blouse torn open. Except . . . his fingers went to the pocket of his shirt and he found the little white sphere he’d tucked there for safekeeping.

  It was a tiny thing, a fussy piece of femininity designed to frustrate clunky masculine fingers.

  He should have tossed it in the trash or maybe made a mental note to save it to return to Heather, but Clay found himself tucking it safely into the pocket of his slacks, shoving it deep down, so it wouldn’t fall out. Then he walked to the bedside phone and located the name of the hotel he was in.

  Ten seconds later he’d texted his driver and received an ETA.

  Since it was only a few minutes away—his hotel was only two resorts over—he decided to head down to the lobby.

  He was nearly out of the room when he remembered the marriage license.

  “You’re an idiot, Clay,” he said and turned back for the bathroom.

  The used toothbrush was there, next to the open tube of toothpaste. But where thirty minutes earlier, the certificate had been neatly folded, placed carefully out of the splash zone of the sink, now the counter was empty.

  He knew.

  He fucking knew, but he checked the floor to make sure it hadn’t fallen off anyway.

  “Heather,” he growled, his blood boiling in a way that only she ever managed to create. With everyone else, he was calm and collected. With her, he lost his goddamned mind.

  The note he found perched atop the trash can confirmed that.

  Later, porn star.

  P.S. Look forward to hearing from my lawyer.

  He’d locked the door. Clay had locked the fucking door.

  So why was some part of him not surprised that Heather O’Keith could pick a lock?

  “Okay, baby,” he said, shoving the note into his pocket. “Now, it’s on.”

  Chapter Five

  Heather

  “Why. Do. I. Do. These. Things. To. Myself?” Heather asked, punctuating each word with a thunk of her head on her pillow.

  She was somewhere over the Atlantic and was supposed to be sleeping in order to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for her meeting with the board of Colin’s company in Scotland. She was taking over communications of the robotic arm of their partnership while he and CeCe were on their honeymoon. After that, Heather had brief stops in London and Berlin before meeting with a prospective client in Amsterdam.

  It was going to be seventy-two straight hours of meetings, frantically reviewing client notes and finalizing PowerPoint slides, paired with clothing changes on the go, snatching bits of sleep on the plane, and eating whatever crap food she
managed to cram into her mouth in her free minutes . . . no free seconds.

  So she should be sleeping, not holding a crinkled piece of paper that had the potential to ruin her.

  “Get it together, Heather,” she said, tossing the license onto the nightstand and forcing her eyes closed. A couple of deep breaths would settle her, would help her sleep. They always did.

  Except where normally she could drift off in the blink of an eye, her blinks only brought her images of Clay.

  Of Clay over her.

  Of Clay inside her.

  Of Clay’s mouth and hands and fuck, his mouth.

  She’d never lost control like that before. Not with her own hands—or devices, rather—and certainly not with a partner.

  And yes, she did say partner in a non-gender specific way. She had always intimidated men, and so she’d experimented with women during her college years. Not just in a fling sense or a stolen kiss here or there, but in a full-fledged exploration of that part of her sexuality. She’d had real relationships with real feelings.

  There just had been a piece missing inside of her that those relationships had never been able to fill.

  That missing piece came in the form of a penis.

  She snorted, rolling her eyes at her idiocy. It wasn’t just a penis—it was the hard to her soft, that spicy smell, the arms, the abs, the bristles of hair on a chest. Hell, she might have been still fighting it, trying to prove to herself and the world that she didn’t conform to quote-unquote normal heterosexual rules, if not for the combined power of Bec and her college on-again, off-again, Lexy.

  “I’m not saying you’re not attracted to women, Heather,” Bec had said. “Obviously there’s a piece of you who is. But I also do think that some part of you wants to stick it to your mom’s image of the perfect daughter who gets married to the man she chooses and has two point two kids and a picket fence.”

  Lexy had chimed in. “And then there’s the fact that you’re not really into me.”